Re: Translations of folder names - two proposals

[Jamie McCracken <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 10:31 +0200, Kalle Vahlman wrote:

> - Define standard and fixed locations for stuff, in plain english. Not
> because it's the most beautiful language, but because it's the default
> in all computing and most programming languages due to historical
> reasons (bad argument, but makes the most sense). This would be cool
> to be from FDO, but a GNOME standard would suffice (there's no reason
> to be extra friendly to other environments, if standards do not
> exist).

Really? Well all modern distros are shipping non-native apps like
Firefox as their default browser - you sure we want to ignore them?

One thing I would like to make clear is that we do not have the luxury
of one desktop, one toolkit etc that OS/X effectively has and thats why
we have FDO. Yes it sometimes means we have to be more flexible and go
the extra mile workwise in order to create a better integrated desktop
but its worth it.


> 
> - IF needed, translate the name in the GUI (consistently). Note that
> in most cases there is no need to expose the actual path to the user,
> and as paths are not considered to be a good mental model for users
> anyhow, it should be avoided when possible. Take ~/Music (fictional
> example) for instance, that can be referenced as "the music folder" or
> "musiikkikansio" in the GUI where needed (cd ripper, nautilus,
> bookmarks, filechooser, rhythmbox), but there is no need to know where
> it actually resides when using the files through the GUI.

The issue here in not purely translations - we need to have configurable
paths to Music as some will want them in home or desktop or hidden. Not
making them configurable is simply being short sighted and I pity the
poor shmuck who has to go in and change this yet again in the near
future cause we didn't take the big picture into account.

> 
> I personally think that the GUI should abstract the filesystem
> completely from the users view ($HOME is also crap when exposed in the
> GUI) 

Not even OS/X does that! We should aim to hide away the filesystem more
subtly as we are currently doing.

jamie.